A LeBurning Challenge 👑
Featuring A Hot Squad Goals Challenge, A No-Look History Lesson, Rise With Us Rage & More
Good Morning, B&B Ballers! Cheers to the weekend — hope your week has been an excellent one!
Things have been QUIET this week, both in the NBA and on the Top Shot streets. While free agency/trades have been at a standstill of late, we got our first rumor in a while on Friday regarding a potential three-way trade between the Lakers, Jazz and Knicks — with the highlight being Donovan Mitchell landing in New York.
If the Lakers can find a way to move Russell Westbrook’s $47M contract… Salute. But it sure seems like they have run out of good pieces to try and squeeze the last drop of juice from LeBron James’ magical career. Is the only hope… LeBron’s kids?
Let’s get into all the action from the last few days:
A LeBurning Challenge 🔥
Speaking of LeBron…
Pretty much the only game in town for the NBA side of the platform right now is the ‘Squad Goals’ crafting challenges, which continue to roll out. The two teams up for grabs right now are the Laker and the Knicks — and the Los Angeles challenge in particular is a fun one to dive into — with a King James moment as the reward.
But the requirements are a bit eye-popping for those of us who fondly remember the mania days of early 2021 Top Shot — because one of the more beloved moments on the platform is up on the chopping block, with the LBJ no-look three acting as the cheapest moment to satisfy one leg of the challenge. Via OTM:
The S2 base set moment is up 39 percent this week, which sounds like a lot. But to give you an idea of how truly insane last March was, take a look at this current pump compared to the all-time highs:
Look at that little upward line all the way on the right — that’s us! This feels like the Top Shot version of Carl Sagan’s ‘pale blue dot’ picture of Earth:
189 collectors have taken the leap so far, with the challenge ending on Tuesday at 1 PM EST. Most Squad Goals challenges have had around 300-400 completions, so it’ll be interesting to watch where this one lands with the King up for grabs.
Rise With Us Rage ⛹️♀️
On the W side of the platform, we had a bit of drama on Friday surrounding the ‘Rise With Us’ Fandom set.
After previously stating in the WNBA S4 Roadmap that the RWU set would ‘feature at most 15 Moments’, Top Shot intro’d this weekend’s Flash Challenge (the 15th) with a note:
ADDITIONAL NOTE: The 'Rise With Us' Set will be 20 total Moments, and will go through the WNBA Playoffs.
This created a storm within the community — with collectors on both sides of the fence.
A good breakdown of the anger via this thread from @theprojectpat:
And the team responded, with the decision being reversed and the set being closed at 15 moments:
The other side of the argument was that Top Shot is too reactive to the loud voices on Twitter/Discord — but I tend to side with Pat’s thread above. We saw a somewhat similar issue arise in the MSFE Challenge, with the Wheel creating a massive bottleneck on the final moment of the set that left collectors who had grinded the entire set feeling rugged at the buzzer.
Adding 5 more challenges to a set with people a step from the finish line is a tough sell, in my opinion. And erring on the side of not breaking user’s trust should always be a priority, given previous situations.
Flowty x TFM 🤝
The First Mint is excited to partner with Flowty, a peer-to-peer NFT loan and rental platform on the Flow Blockchain founded by Michael Levy (fondly known as MBL throughout the Top Shot community).
Are you an NBA Top Shot collector / investor? Did you know that you can do a LOT more with moments than just buy and sell them?
Need help completing a Top Shot challenge? Rent on Flowty.
Have extra moments for a challenge and want to generate income in a safe way? Rent out your moments on Flowty.
Need liquidity but don’t want to sell your moments? Use moments as collateral to take out a loan on Flowty.
Looking for an alternative way to invest in Top Shot? Generate passive income by lending (funding loans) on Flowty.
Flowty’s rental and loan marketplace allows renters, owners, borrowers and lenders to transact in a safe and easy way!
Want to learn more? Join the Flowty Discord and follow along on Twitter at @flowty_io.
Around The First Mint 🗣
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Thanks for reading! — Zach @ The First Mint
Follow Zach on Twitter at @GhostOfGregOden.
**This is not financial advice. Nothing in this newsletter, podcast, or publication should be considered financial or trading advice of any kind. Please do your own thorough research and make your own trading decisions. This is not advice.”
About The First Mint
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